While Battle Ground resident Don Freeman has made the baseball coaching move from Germany to Italy this year, he is soon to depart for South Africa, which will mark the sixth and likely final continent of his baseball journey.
Freeman had coached in the Battle Ground Public Schools district for over 30 years and has since embarked on five of seven continents to spread the joys of baseball. Freeman landed in Porto Sant'Elpidio, Italy, along the shores of the Adriatic Sea on March 5 and will continue to coach the men's team as well as assist with the younger teams in the local baseball program.
"My apartment is two minutes from the field and I have an eight to nine minute walk to get to the sea," Freeman said. "The water is so wonderful. It's not quite like Long Beach, Washington. You can actually just walk right in, and the water is wonderful. My wife appreciates that too."
Originally, this European baseball stint was going to last until October, and he would return home to Battle Ground. But, Freeman was offered an opportunity to travel way down south to Cape Town, South Africa, for a two to three-week baseball venture for the PlayGlobal organization that assists in many countries worldwide. The trip to the new continent for Freeman will take place simultaneously after his stint in Italy concludes in October.
The day before the phone call interview with The Reflector, just a mere 5,727 miles away, Freeman was asked, and he likely will, help run a baseball clinic in Bratislava, Slovenia, for a weekend. That journey would return Freeman to a place he has been before, but again, it just proves baseball can take a man anywhere.
"My goodness, I've played baseball since I was, you know, a little guy," Freeman said. "And the game has taken me to almost uncountable countries and, you know, six continents, it's just almost unimaginable. But, I appreciate the opportunity, and I really look forward to it."
The trip to Africa obviously has a focus on baseball, but Freeman has more to look forward to there.
"Africa's always intrigued me because I love animals and they have a few of those there," he said. "When you go to places like this, they give you a couple of days off and one of the first things I'm going to ask is to go on one of those [wildlife safaris]."
With this incredible journey through the game of baseball, landing Freeman on each likely continent, there's one really cold and snowy one home to the South Pole. Freeman said if he gets the opportunity, he certainly would, but joked that anything baseball-related would likely get cancelled due to weather on the continent of Antarctica.
With Freeman's adventures and coaching experience, he shared his big message for coaches back home in the states.
"My message is, whatever sport, whatever activity, whether it's band, drama, baseball, basketball, football, you know, volleyball, it doesn't matter, you open up your life because you meet so many other people and you really quickly realize that everybody is different," Freeman said. "But everybody's the same. They have a passion for something …"
It may have been a sign of what's to come, but Freeman's first ever baseball game, which he played for the Blaine, Washington Cub Scouts right at the Canadian border, was an international affair.
"We traveled internationally four miles across the border into Canada because I played right there on the border and played a baseball game, and it was snowy and cold. My first, second at-bats, I had got hit by a pitch and I'm thinking, 'this game isn't all that fun.'"
But Freeman kept coming back to the activity of baseball, and now he has helped others with their love for the game across the globe.
